Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises a very important issue. It is essential for young people that we give vocational and technical education the right esteem and focus, because that is essential in addressing our productivity gap. We want to deliver a world-leading technical education system and create two genuine options for young people that are equal in esteem. At the Budget my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced a significant package of investment to implement the most ambitious post-16 reforms since the introduction of A-levels 70 years ago. We are going to be investing an extra half a billion pounds a year in England’s technical education system and introducing maintenance loans to support those studying high-level technical qualifications at prestigious institutes of technology and national colleges.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Q2. The Treasury Committee says that for many small companies, having to fill in a tax return every three months will mean facing disaster, and the Federation of Small Businesses says that the extra annual cost is likely to be at least £2,700 a year—yet another burden on business from this Government. The Prime Minister got it wrong on national insurance; is she going to backtrack on tax returns as well?

[The Prime Minister]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should have listened to the announcement that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor made in the Budget, when he indicated that he would delay the introduction of the change for a year for the smallest businesses below the VAT threshold. It is right that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs tries to move to a greater digitisation of how it operates, enabling it to provide a better service to those who are completing their forms. We should always remember that aspect of what is being proposed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. I know about OXPIP and I am delighted that she is expanding the project into her own constituency. All the evidence shows that the more we can do to help children and their parents between the ages of nought and two—the key time at which so much disadvantage, which can have such a bad impact later on in life, can set in—the better. That is why her work, and that of Members across the House, in prioritising early intervention is so important for our country.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Q9. The Prime Minister was asked by his constituent Phillip Hall, who runs his own construction company, to cut VAT on home repairs and improvements. Cutting VAT on home improvements has the support of more than 50 business organisations, including the Federation of Small Businesses. Will the Prime Minister support that cut in VAT, which would help jobs, growth and business?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman’s problem is that the Opposition have a huge list of extra spending and tax cuts that they want, but as we have heard again today in Question Time, they oppose every single spending reduction we are making and every single fundamental reform to get better value for money. One can only conclude that spending would go up, borrowing would rocket, interest rates would increase and the economy would be left in very dire straits.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. He will have noticed that the global poverty action fund that we launched is principally a matched fund, in order to enable the taxpayer to piggyback on the brilliant development outcomes that many of our NGOs produce. That is the right principle, whereby taxpayer support can focus on results, outputs and outcomes, and not on inputs.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

4. What steps he is taking to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV in developing countries by 2015.

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

11. What steps his Department is taking to support the UNAIDS goal to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2015.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Stephen O'Brien)]

The Government are committed to a comprehensive approach to eliminating paediatric AIDS by focusing on where we have a comparative advantage—that is, on primary prevention of HIV among women of child-bearing age and on prevention of unintended pregnancies among women living with HIV through our investments in family planning.

[Bill Esterson]

Does the Minister agree that it is important that children who have already contracted HIV should be able to access medicines to stay alive? If so, will he join me in calling on pharmaceutical companies to make their patents available to the patent pool, so that there can be affordable HIV drugs for children?

[Mr O'Brien]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s question. The Government definitely support the UNITAID patent pool, which is, as he knows, a mechanism to facilitate the development of new, particularly fixed-dose combination drugs, partly to ward off the danger of monotherapies. That can be a key means of addressing the treatment challenge. We welcome UNITAID’s decision to create a separate foundation to manage the pool’s activities, and we recognise that that is an important step. We now need the milestones to be put in place as rapidly as possible, so that we can convert it to a working programme going forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Prime Minister]

I am not fully up to date with that particular planning circular, but I reassure my hon. Friend that, as I have said here before, Traveller communities should be treated in a similar way to other communities, in that they cannot have planning permission retrospectively granted when they have not obeyed the rules. That is not right. Everyone should obey the law.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Q6. I wrote to the Prime Minister about my constituent, Scott Sheard from Formby. Scott suffered severe brain damage when he was assaulted in July, and he needs a wheelchair so that he can go home. Will the Prime Minister join me in welcoming the good news that Scott’s wheelchair will be ready next week, and will he intervene to help others in Merseyside and elsewhere who have been on the waiting list for wheelchairs for far too long?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, I am certainly happy to do that. The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point. MPs of all parties in all parts of the House, and anyone who has ever tried to get a wheelchair for anybody, will know that the delays and the lack of choice and the lack of power people have is incredibly frustrating. It must be possible in this day and age to put more power in the hands of patients or parents to make sure we have better choice, faster wheelchairs—[Interruption.] Sorry. We should get the wheelchairs a bit faster.